Ley farming is an agricultural

Agriculture

Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...

 system where the field is alternately seeded for grain

GRAIN

GRAIN is a small international non-profit organisation that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems. Our support takes the form of independent research and analysis, networking at local, regional and...

 and left fallow. Other name for the method is "alternate husbandry".

In ley farming, the field is alternately used for grain or other cash crop

Cash crop

In agriculture, a cash crop is a crop which is grown for profit.The term is used to differentiate from subsistence crops, which are those fed to the producer's own livestock or grown as food for the producer's family...

s for a number of years and "laid down to ley" i.e. left fallow, used for growing hay

Hay

Hay is grass, legumes or other herbaceous plants that have been cut, dried, and stored for use as animal fodder, particularly for grazing livestock such as cattle, horses, goats, and sheep. Hay is also fed to pets such as rabbits and guinea pigs...

 or used for pasture

Pasture

Pasture is land used for grazing. Pasture lands in the narrow sense are enclosed tracts of farmland, grazed by domesticated livestock, such as horses, cattle, sheep or swine. The vegetation of tended pasture, forage, consists mainly of grasses, with an interspersion of legumes and other forbs...

 for another number of years. After that period it is again ploughed and used for cash crops.

During the fallow/pasture period the soil is filled with roots of grass

Grass

Grasses, or more technically graminoids, are monocotyledonous, usually herbaceous plants with narrow leaves growing from the base. They include the "true grasses", of the Poaceae family, as well as the sedges and the rushes . The true grasses include cereals, bamboo and the grasses of lawns ...

es and other plants. New ploughing mixes them with the soil and also increases the amount of nitrogen

Nitrogen

Nitrogen is a chemical element that has the symbol N, atomic number of 7 and atomic mass 14.00674 u. Elemental nitrogen is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, and mostly inert diatomic gas at standard conditions, constituting 78.08% by volume of Earth's atmosphere...

 in the ground, removing need of artificial nitrogen fertilizer

Fertilizer

Fertilizer is any organic or inorganic material of natural or synthetic origin that is added to a soil to supply one or more plant nutrients essential to the growth of plants. A recent assessment found that about 40 to 60% of crop yields are attributable to commercial fertilizer use...

s. It also disturbs the life cycle of pest

Pest (animal)

A pest is an animal which is detrimental to humans or human concerns. It is a loosely defined term, often overlapping with the related terms vermin, weeds, parasites and pathogens...

s.

See also

• Crop rotation
  Crop rotation
  Crop rotation is the practice of growing a series of dissimilar types of crops in the same area in sequential seasons.Crop rotation confers various benefits to the soil. A traditional element of crop rotation is the replenishment of nitrogen through the use of green manure in sequence with cereals...
  
  
• Shmita the seventh year of the Jewish seven-year agricultural cycle, where the land is left to lie fallow and all agricultural activity—including plowing, planting, pruning and harvesting—is forbidden by Torah law.

External links

• Book about Ley Farming by George Stapledon
  George Stapledon
  Sir Reginald George Stapledon FRS was an English grassland scientist and pioneer environmentalist.-Early life:...
  
  
• http://www.ag.ndsu.nodak.edu/dickinso/agronomy/leyfarming.htm